Blog on Selective Mutism

It was several years later at a company picnic when a little girl came up to me and I spoke to her,but she did not speak to me.  I knew her mother from another department and with the interaction I had just had with the child and what the mother said I spotted it right away as selective mutism.

The mother told me not to bother that he daughter was shy and does not speak around strangers.  When I asked if this was the case a school, she said yes.  I then asked what the doctor said. She said she never mentioned it to him. I asked if she knew what is was and she said know what what is?

She had no idea that her child had selective mutism,  I told her what I thought it was and asked her to go on the Internet and do research and bring it with her the next time she went to the doctors and to the teachers.

It was about a month later that she came by my office and told me she could not thank me enough.  That indeed that is what it was for her daughter and that now that they all knew they were all working together on her selective mutism.

Sometimes, if you suspect it, tell the mother or the father.  She went on to say they suspected something, but they were too afraid to address it.  They just hoped it would go away or she would out grew it.